Chapter 201 On the Hull 

Wang Hou and I boarded the ship, each paying for our own fair. 

It felt like I was entering a realm, something separate but all its own. And that wouldn’t be a misinterpretation of that either. The ship was layered, in both space and time. Technically, I could walk all over the ship, but what I observed was just one side of the ship. There was more dimensionality to this place than just what I observed. 

It worked like my forest in a way. 

I was here, segregated to one version of the ship. In other versions of the ship, there were other people. Other sects, other clans, demonic cultivators, cargo. We were all on the same ship, just different parts of it. 

In other words what I saw wasn’t even the whole of the automaton, just a sliver of it. 

Here I was riding on the back of a god across the void between worlds. Here I was witnessing things and knowing concepts that Bill Terrance, the original Bill Terrance couldn’t have even imagined. 

I felt happy. 

Sure, the impending war and my broken soul and my new dao added complexities to my life. 

But a part of me, that still mortal feeling human part, couldn’t help but be in awe. I could see the nothing, the water, dragons and trades, gods and devils. I was alive and living, seeing things, and that was something beautiful all its own.

All I could compare it to was like seeing the most beautiful sky while loading up your groceries in a parking lot. Or suddenly noticing how beautiful those flowers you passed by every day were. Or those moments when you would just stare at a bird that was always around your house, but you constantly ignored. The world was just amazing when you looked at it sometimes. 

I wondered how many immortals could say they had the same feelings? I wonder how many of them could stare out and into the void like I could and feel a sense of wonder. Fear probably, tension, yes. Awe? Most definitely. But wonder was something different I think. 

 Wonder, at least my wonder, was awe and insignificance. It was that feeling you got staring at the stars and knowing you weren’t important. It was the breath of a city’s wave, feet stomping around you and you understanding that everyone had their own life.

It was sonder and joy. 

Bill had done that a lot, once on a cruise, another time on a hike. He would just stare off the ship or into the forest’s leaves and feel so small and revel in it. The world would continue without him, he thought. The world would outlive him and he wouldn’t even be a footnote on a footnote. 

And he had felt so warm in that thought. 

Ironically, earth was now only remembered by him, and maybe a few God-Imperiums who only knew it because of him. 

And in the same way, this world, this wide consuming world that made me feel even smaller than Bill had when staring out into the stars. 

Apparently, I might be a notable player in it all. 

“Senior brother, do not stare into the abyss for too long. You dare not catch the eyes of a chaos being.”

I nodded. 

I didn’t know if a chaos beings could do anything to me while I was on the ship, but seeing it might influence my nature and that was a bad thing. 

I unfocused my eyes and waited, standing on something made of concepts and metaphors. To me, it was solid metal, and long railings surrounded us. We could look over them, but we couldn’t climb them. The ship wouldn’t let us. 

In truth, that was just my interpretation of the ship. I saw it as it existed relative to me. I didn’t see the whole of the thing, and I didn’t need to. 

“Setting sail now,” a thought echoed in our heads. 

It felt like the world was moving. The ship itself felt still, contained even. There was no sense of motion, the same way that a man on a planet wouldn’t feel the earth turn but would see the sun rise.

Even though I knew the ship was moving, the surroundings, Atlantis, the great beings still at the piers of Atlantis, it felt as if they were all moving around us and that the ship was standing still. 

Both Wang Hou and I watched as the world became small. Atlantis shrank in size as we grew further from it. We would be heading into the Entropic Path for a bit before back out and heading towards the Law Lands.

“Senior brother, this view is amazing! I have never before seen the world run so fast! Though I do not like the deep chaos to come.”

I had, on that qi stream with Wukong once. But it was still amazing. 

As for the chaos, he was right. I focused and saw the hive I had seen earlier, marching in to fight some chaos being, still there at the edge of Atlantis. In a moment, we covered a distance that would take them a day to traverse and suddenly we were above a war zone. 

Laws broke down here, logic became nothing. It felt like the times I had seen Wukong or the Tome, whereas their presence had tried to rewrite me into someone else, being here tried to unwrite me. 

The ship blocked it, along with the other World-King’s auras but they couldn’t block it out entirely. After all, this was just the consequences of being close to Chaos Gates. Being of the seventeenth rank lived beyond there. 

There were God-Imperiums within the Entropic Path as well, but we wouldn’t reach any of their domain this far in. And just like the Heavens and the Hells, God-Imperiums who did make their home within the Chaordic Bound rarely had an actual side. 

Like Lynoria, everything within the paths was limited. The Gold Lands, while great, were not the iron hands of the Heavens. The Descending Path was the same. You’d find evil there, but not total evil. 

The same could be said for this place. There was chaos here, but there was also order. These places were the transition zones. Total chaos was a long while away. 

I felt a tap on my shoulder and I turned to see a woman. No one else saw here, in fact, no one else seemed to even be breathing. Her eyes were black, and she wore a dress made of ravens. Beaks peaked out from her dark abyss and unlike all the other God-Imperiums I had met, this one managed to restrain herself and not shape me in her essence. 

She had pale white skin and pitch black lips. Her hair was darkness and her skin was almost blinding. 

“I should have guessed this would happen,” I muttered as I pulled out the Tome and handed it over to the strange lady. 

She took it and I suddenly found myself facing the direction I originally had. The people around me began to move again and I felt movement once more. 

If only other God-Imperiums were as nice as her. 

The Tome was back with me in an instant. I had no idea what that lady and the book had talked about, and while I had my guesses, I didn’t care to ask. 

‘Will I be doing this all the time? Serving as a messenger between you and the rest of existence?’

Only when its convenient. Now that you are considered a member of my sect, there is some attention upon you, but your interaction with other God-Imperiums makes you hard to divine and your lesser rank puts you out of their attention. The Raven approached me as she had learned some things herself. I did not plot this. 

I sighed. 

“Senior, is something wrong?” Wang Hou asked me.

“No, I’m just a little lost in thought,” I replied. 

The chaos boiled below us. The journey would take some time, hopefully we wouldn’t be here too long.

AN: Alright. I'm all better, and I bought a small tablet so I can write more at work. I plan to release at least four, if not six chapters of AIR by this Sunday. This is all I got today. See you tomorrow for a double chapter.

Thanks for reading!